Pinger

21 December 2012

The following comes from The Tablet, with the second link coming from the Haaretz article The Tablet links to. It suggests that UN sources (should we choose to believe them, and why should we?) are claiming that Islamists and Jihadists are being drawn into Syria as the regime continues to crumble. I'm not certain that this is, in any way, new news: this has been reported for some weeks, even months, now. However, the disturbing part is in the sentence that comes after "Jihadists from around the world": Why are the Jordanian officials warning Israel as well as Western nations? Do they think that (a) Israel is somehow responsible for this development? One would have thought that Israel would prefer a stable Syria that took notice to avoid upsetting its powerful neighbour to its south-west, even if the regime is murdering its citizens, to an unstable Islamist/Jihadist regime that foamed at the mouth at the mere mention of Israel. Or (b), do they think Israel doesn't know this and is unaware of the consequences of this development? I'd be willing to place a small wager on Israeli intelligence knowing this long before the Jordanians woke up to threat, more immediate for them, to their north.

Anyway, a quote from the article shows what I mean about the mention of Israel: ""...senior Jordanian officials warned this week that Syria may devolve into a "black hole that sucks Jihadists from around the world."...they [further] claim[ed] that despite their warnings to Western nations and Israel against this expected development in their strife-ridden northern neighbor, advanced weaponry continues to flow into the hands of Salafist and Jihadist organizations who are gradually taking over the rebellion against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad."

The further link mentioned above gets us to this report, again from Haaretz, via The Tablet, of an Israeli spy satellite spotting an Iranian ship being loaded with missiles from Sudan bound, presumably, for Gaza. The most worrying aspect of this is that "“Regardless of the cease-fire agreement, we will attack and destroy any shipment of arms to Gaza once we have spotted it,” an Israeli defense source told the Times." (Haharetz, in turn, has these reports from the Sunday Times of the UK). It may also be of concern to Israel that the Iranian cargo ship is being accompanied by an Iranian warship which will, it is assumed, escort the cargo ship into the Red Sea and, presumably, at least to a transhipping in Egypt.

When (and if) the IDF will seek to destroy the cargo isn't part of this report.